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Microsoft has made its first pitch to PeopleSoft customers, offering them a discount on Microsoft applications to lure them away while the company is subsumed into Oracle.

PeopleSoft customers are bound to be nervous about Oracle's acquisition of their vendor, and so Microsoft has launched a migration program offering them licensing and support discounts to its rival business applications.

Migration guides, a 25 percent licensing discount, and a 25 percent discount on the first year of maintenance and support are on offer for those that grab the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) portfolio by 22 June.

Microsoft has sent mixed signals about its interest in and ability to compete with PeopleSoft at the high end of the ERP market. When the US Department of Justice (DoJ) dragged Oracle to court last year to contest its PeopleSoft merger plans, MBS head Doug Burgum appeared as a DoJ witness to testify that Microsoft's business applications are suitable only for small and mid-size companies.

Burgum went so far as to admit problems with deploying MBS's Axapta software at office supplies maker Esselte, a company whose more than $1 billion in annual sales, places it among the largest of Microsoft's business applications customers.

Despite Burgum's claims - which the trial judge dismissed as unreliable and self-serving - Microsoft continues to hold up its products as an option for almost any back-office need.

"There is a recent and strong history in PeopleSoft customers looking at our solutions since all of this news has been going on," MBS marketing head Tami Reller said. Microsoft's migration offer covers all three of PeopleSoft's product sets.